Our website uses cookies to improve your user experience. If you continue browsing, we assume that you consent to our use of cookies. More information can be found in our Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy.

Jakob Nielsen on press area usability

Nielsen’s latest Alertbox post this week looks at the issue of press area usability for journalists, finding that plenty of the websites studied fail to adequately provide information for such visitors.

Poor usability and lack of information in press areas will result in journalists deciding not to include a company in the article they are writing, or else force them to get their information from third party sources, and can represent a lost PR opportunity.

According to Nielsen, journalists are looking for five things in a press area;

Press contacts,

Basic facts about a company,

A company’s view on particular events

Financial information

Images to use in articles

I’ve had a look at a few websites to see how they cater for journalists:

Press contacts

Being able to contact a real human being is essential for journalists researching stories. Deadlines mean that information is needed within hours or minutes, so most people would be reluctant to use an email address or contact form with no guarantee of a speedy response. This means providing contact numbers is essential so that journalists can quickly find out the information they need, or get some comment on a story.

Northern Rock does this well, providing a list of press contacts, including email addresses and contact numbers. On the other hand, having looked at its Global, European and UK websites, all Flash-heavy and slow to load, I was unable to find any press contacts for Nissan.

Financial Info

DSGi, which owns Currys, PC World and others, does have a clear link to its press area, but financial information is less easy to find. News, images and contacts are all there, but apart from the latest share price, there is no link to financials, which there should be for a public company. Trading statements are there, but buried in the news section, and also displayed on PDFs, which Nielsen advises against due to their potential to annoy users.

Tesco does this better, providing a link to the Investor Centre which contains all the financial information you could wish for.

One major problem I had on most of the sites I looked at, was actually finding the press and media information. As outlined on this blog recently, journalists are looking for three specific links from a company’s website: the ‘about’ page, ‘press’ and ‘blog’. Blogs are hard to find as many major firms may not have adopted this as yet, but the other two links should be there.

As journalists may come via search engines, which will generally place a brand’s e-commerce site above links to corporate info, these links should be available at the bottom of the home page where people expect to find these links.

For example, Next has a link to both ‘the company’ and ‘media’ on its homepage, but finding these links is harder on Tesco, though the media information is good once you find it. Making these links available and well labelled will help journalists find what they want from your website, and makes it more likely that they will give your firm some coverage.

Recommended

I purchased two things last year that have improved my world considerably.

The first purchase was the Roland Juno, a synthesiser that is pound for pound the best value for money of anything I’ve ever bought. It is tremendous fun and all manner of synthy noises and weird Devo-esque sounds. It even has a cowbell. I can’t really play it, but I have a lot of fun trying.

The second thing was the delightful Apple iPhone. As you probably know, it is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. For anybody who runs websites for a living it is a must-have. I’ve been sleeping more soundly since I bought it…

Insurance aggregator Confused.com has been promoting its new look site recently with a TV campaign which focuses on the usability of its website.

On the ads, Confused.com has got its customers to say what they think about the new-look site, with a focus on the improved user experience. With this in mind, how easy is it to get a car insurance quote on the new site?

Checkout processes are supposed to be made as easy as possible for customers to complete. Of course, a certain amount of detail is required to complete a transaction, but this should be made relatively painless for the user.

The checkout and purchase process should be smooth and easy to understand, distractions should be removed, while the amount of information required and the number of steps should be kept to a minimum to make it as quick as possible. This is not the case on VistaPrint though, which has one of the most complicated checkouts I have seen.

TopGear.com, the sister site to the popular BBC motoring programme, has been trumpeting its relaunch with a series of viral videos seeded on sites like YouTube and Facebook.

The look of the site has been improved, while car reviews, and more blog and video content has been added. The redesigned TopGear.com also displays new and used cars from AutoTrader. This brings it into competition with sites like Autocar and Parkers, so I’ve been seeing how it compares.

Travel comparison company lastminute.com has opted for a low key launch of its revamped website, giving users the chance to use the new version and give feedback.

The redesigned version of lastminute devotes more space to providing holiday ideas and showing the latest deals on offer, so the search box is less prominent than before. The old version is still running alongside the new one, which gives me a chance to compare the two.

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.